Vertigo Quarterly: Cyan #1 – Review

By: Too many to list—or even to review. Just check out the issue.

The Story: It’s impossible not to feel blue after reading this.

The Review: Of all the showcase titles out in recent years, the ones from Vertigo have been the best by far, with a good mix of known and unknown writers confidently spinning self-contained yarns from the chosen motif. Until now, I haven’t had a proper appreciation for the choice of motif, which provides some degree of unity to what would otherwise be jumbles of disparate, unconnected stories. But revolving stories around a color doesn’t quite do the same trick.

The big difference is that a color is an abstract concept in comparison to, say, witches or ghosts, which are somewhat more defined, even if a writer takes the notion in some radical direction. In theory, you can write any story and shoehorn a bit of cyan in there, which is what a lot of the features in this issue do, whether it’s Shaun Simon’s unconvincing “Serial Artist” or a metaphysical numbers extravaganza in Mony Nero’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” It’s easy enough for the colorists to dab a bit of sharp light blue in any given feature, but difficult to grasp the color’s effect on the story.

Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #3 – Review

by Robert Rodi (Writer), Michael Del Mundo (Artist)

The Story: As Otto fights the invasion with the rest of the Mighty Avengers, a girl gets transformed into something else entirely.

The Review: Sometimes, during large event comics, we can get some unfortunate creative changes for some books. Some of them are temporary and some of them are actually for the best, like when Jason Aaron took on Black Panther during Secret Invasion, but some of them can be short affairs that have the only comfort is the rather short time they will be on a title.

It’s sad to say, but Robert Rodi is more easily associated to the latter statement than the former, as while he does play to the team-up format of this book and do seem to get how to write Spider-Ock, his story never really lift off in a way that seems natural or even well thought-out.

Part of the problem is due to the pacing, which is atrocious at times. There are two scenes, tow narratives that jumps around in the beginning, with a new character named Sylvia being in a library while Spider-Ock battles on with the Mighty Avengers. The two scenes are very disconnected from each other, with their progression being halted each times the focus is altered. The two scenes do finally connect in some way, yet it takes quite a bit of time to reach that point, which doesn’t help the progression of this story at all.